Memento Mori
by Claro3
Summary: Emmeline Vance has a story to tell. Rating and secondary genre are mostly for later chapters. Memnto Mori: loosely translated, remeber your death.
1. Dawn

Memento Mori

Rated M (for later chapters, though there are some instances of not-so-subtle innuendo in the first)

Featuring evil!book!Snape and Emmeline Vance

Summary: Emmeline Vance is dead. She'd like to tell you how that came to pass.

Note: most of this writer in the wee hours of the night, which are also the wee hours of the morning. Also, if you haven't seen Casablanca, don't tell me that you don't get the quotes, go see the movie. It's the greatest romantic movie ever made.

Excuse: My betas abandoned me. They are- for the most part- buried with midterms/ finals/ college applications/ SAT Prep. I, however, am operating on a different schedule, so I'm not dealing with all the same crap. Well, I am, I'm just dealing with it at a slower, more leisurely pace. Already elongated story short, this story was not beta'd. There are four more chapters to come, and if anyone wants to beta those, I'd be forever grateful.

Disclaimer: I have no money, don't sue me.

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Chapter One: Dawn

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I keep- I kept. _Kept. _You will forgive me if I have trouble to using the past tense when speaking about my life? I was alive not long ago. 

At least, I feel that I was alive not long ago. But death lasts so much longer than life, and time is relative.

But, I digress. Allow me to return to my narrative.

I kept a small flat in London. It _was_ a muggle flat. There are wizards and witches who would, or would have, disapproved of such a thing. There are those who find muggle inventions inferior to magic. I will grant them this: they can be much more problematic at times. But I always found that when they worked correctly, they were relaxing. To do magic is to use energy. Electricity, running water, those things are simply _there. _One need not constantly expend energy to reap their benefits. I found them relaxing.

Found. The word seems heavy in my mouth. It is so much rounder and fuller and richer in sound, in tonal quality than its present tense counterpart. Perhaps I will come to like it in time. Perhaps.

My flat. It was small. It was neat, clean. The walls were, and, probably, are, white. The kitchen, living room and foyer were all combined. The lighting was wonderful. The floors where carpeted in light blue. The kitchen surfaces were all chrome, highly polished. I cleaned them myself. Elbow grease is good for the soul, that's what my father used to say. He was a mechanic, my father. A good man. A muggle.

But again, I digress.

My flat was clean to the point of being sterile, for I never had any guests. Nor was I there very often. I spent most of my time at work; I was a research assistant to a one Mr. Atlas Bumbledee.

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that this was not his real name.

My job. Research assistant to a man who wrote three hundred and seventy-five manuscripts, none of which were ever published on a large scale, on the most bizarre, arcane, or simply useless topics imaginable. He paid me handsomely, as well he should.

Should have, I mean. Meant? Mean. Meant. Good God.

It was exhausting work. It was not dull, but no matter how much one loves books, after a time one comes to realize that there is no substitute for the symbiotic energy of another human being. Books tire you, and only give so much energy in return. The right person, on the other hand, can be like the fountain of youth.

I was thirty-five. I looked forty-eight. I hadn't been on a date in seven… ten… fifteen… Fifteen years. I rarely slept, and when I did, it was usually at a desk, or on a couch in someone else's home. Mr. Bumbledee's, perhaps, or another colleague, from one of my less reputable jobs.

I was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, you know. There are some people in my position who can still say that sentence in the present tense, but I am not among them. I didn't think about the possible necessity of tethering my ethereal self to the earthly world. Like so many fools, I lacked foresight and told myself I had no fear.

But I had nothing but fear. I was afraid of mirrors. I was afraid of my apartment. I was afraid of old family pictures, of my friend's significant others, of my bed, of the calendar. I was afraid of anything that reminded me of my solitude. But mostly, most of all, I was afraid of being old. I was afraid of growing old alone. I was afraid of dying alone.

Well, at least I know one of those fears was groundless. It wouldn't have happened to me if I'd wanted it to.

Even in the end, I'm not sure I did.

But I digress.

After the Death Eaters raided the department of Mysteries, after my employer roped me into my second and considerably less lax job, after the bickering, the suspicion, the months of endless, fruitless surveillance, I went home.

It was after a particularly unpleasant meeting of the Order. Our resident swot and resident ass Severus Snape had spent as much time as possible reminding his fellow warriors- pitifully vain word, I've always thought- of the terrible dangers he faced each time he double-crossed the Dark Lord. Our resident codger Alastor Moody had spent an equal amount of time dishing out the most heinous verbal abuse he could (my ears still burn from it). Our fearless, exhausted leader had snapped at everyone, and called it a night. A miserable, unfinished, unproductive failure of a night.

I had never been fond of Alastor. Additionally, I had always pitied Severus. Snape. Snivellus. Whatever you wish to call him. In retrospect, I had terrible taste.

Foolish women usually do.

I was tired. I was apathetic. I went home.

I had not been home since I joined the order.

I couldn't sleep.

Insomnia is no longer a problem for me, and I have learned to be grateful for small favors.

I had not been home in eleven weeks, but it felt like a lifetime. I had come to miss the simple cleanliness, bright light and cool air of my flat as much as I come to hate its emptiness.

I remember how I unlocked my front door, the key was small and flashed silver-bright in the dim hall light, and slipped in. I opened my door as little as possible, and closed it as quickly as I could.

I had been told on more than one occasion that everything a person does reflects their emotional life. Perhaps the door was a metaphor.

I turned on my light. The light switch was just of the right of the deadbolt lock, nestled between the doorframe and a protrusion of wall, the left side of one of my two small closets. The other was in my bedroom. The main space in my flat was lit by seven light bulbs, all set in the ceiling. They gave off white light, painfully bright.

I had a coat rack and a mat for shoes close to the door. Beyond that, there was the living room, and slightly to the right of that, and behind it, was the kitchen.

My living room was Spartan, to say the least. It was furnished with exactly (_exactly_) five items. Five. Item the first: A gray three person couch. Soft, but not overstuffed. Upholstered with velour. This created the "back wall" of the room. Directly behind it were a small open space, and then the tiny hallway that lead to my bedroom. Item the second: A small light stand, on which there was no light. It was made of a sheet of blue-ish glass and four metal rods brushed with chrome. This was next to the left arm of the couch, at a slight angle to it. It generally functioned as the resting place for a book. That night it was adorned by The Tale of Genji (Penguin Classics, unabridged, translation by Royall Tyler). Item the third: A single armchair, a perfect match for the couch. Situated to the left of the light stand, again at a slight angle, but nearly perpendicular to the couch, it formed the left wall of the room. Item the fourth: A coffee table, also made of blue-ish glass and chrome-brushed metal. I rarely used it. It was the permanent home of a remote control, and the occasional home of a solitary metal and black rubber mug. Last, but not least, item the fifth: A flat panel, wide screen, HD, LCD television, wall mounted. My guilty pleasure, and my one great indulgence. I almost always found myself satisfied with whatever was on (I had nearly every channel imaginable), and when I wasn't, I could turn to the book on the light stand.

I took off my shoes, hung up my coat, and went to my kitchen. I made myself a cup of tea (green), and a slice of toast (white bread and butter in a frying pan, like I learned from my father). I took what passed for a meal in my lonely little one-woman world and went to sit on my couch.

I turned on the television, I channel surfed. News. News. Worse news. Fake news. Reruns. Campy movies. Classic movies. Pornography. News.

I decided to settle in for the better part of "Casablanca", a movie I knew by heart. It had been a favorite of both my parents.

I picked up, mouthing the words right along, with Ilsa, at "play it once Sam, for old time's sake." If my mouth hadn't been full of toast when he began, I would have sung along with him. (You must remember this / A kiss is still a kiss / A sigh is just a sigh / The fundamental things apply / As time goes by.)

I have had- is that right? Is that how I say it? I'm not sure.- friends who begged me to sing and friends who begged me not to. I could carry a tune, but my voice was low and rough for a woman's, in speech and song.

I drank my tea, ate my toast, placed my mug and plate in the kitchen sink, washed my hands, went and curled up on the couch properly. I watched Ilsa and Rick kiss "as if it were the last time". I muttered every line under my breath.

It was five-thirty in the morning, and Renault was "shocked, shocked to find that gambling" was occurring in Rick's bar when my doorbell rang.

My first reaction was fear. Terrible, paralyzing fear. I felt cold, my chest constricted, my throat dried out.

The bell rang five times before I peeled myself away from the couch.

When I opened the door, the fear retreated. Or, at least, became subordinate to shock.

A haggard Severus Snape stood at my threshold. We stared at one another for a moment, and my mind did the most foolish and inexplicable things imaginable. I panicked, because I had dirty dishes in my sink. I panicked, because I was afraid he might kiss me. (You must understand, _that _worry was utterly irrational. He have no indication that he would, I merely worried that he would. I worried that he would because, secretly, I hoped that he would.) I panicked, because I knew I must have looked terrible.

You must remember that I had not any male visitors in a very, very long time. Minerva had come by now and then for a cup of tea, but she offered me very little in the way of companionship. She certainly did not offer me the possibility of sexual gratification. I realize that most people would not view Severus Snape as sexually attractive, but a foolish woman is often a desperate one, and lack of sleep has been known to impair the judgment of greater people than myself.

He looked terrible. Worse than usual, I mean. His sallow skin had taken on a green-ish gray pallor, and his eyes looked sunken, ringed with dark circles. There were bags under his eyes as well, something I had never seen before. All the years I had known him, it had been as if his body were simply too thin to manufacture the extra skin, but now, there they were. Dark, puffy bags.

The look in his eyes was just as troubling as the decline in his already decrepit looks. He seemed more haunted than usual, and certainly a great deal more tired. Exhausted was the word.

The movie had warmed me up, and his appearance had rendered my heartstrings thoroughly plucked. I stuttered, I stumbled over myself and my words, but somehow managed to invite him.

He didn't stagger, exactly, but he came as close to that as I had ever seen him. He sat- _sat _with the kind of force only the dead tired can muster- in my armchair. He raked his fingers over his face, and held his head in his hands. I could tell he had a story to tell me. He radiated the subdued, arresting energy of the master story-teller.

I knew that, no matter how long or fantastic the tale, I would listen. I listen because of boredom, loneliness, desperation, compassion, any excuse I could give myself.

I would listen because of a deeply hidden, inexplicable schoolgirl crush I barely knew I retained.

I would listen because my libido drove me to listen, because of the very faint hope that at the end of his recitations, he might seek physical comfort from the only warm body in the room. (I didn't even know, then, whether or not he was straight. I suppose I still don't, though I have a considerably better idea of his sexual preferences.)

The first light of dawn was creeping in through my windows.

I closed the door.

On screen, Ilsa was speaking with (or, rather, somewhat desperately at) her husband. "Victor, whatever I do," she said, "will you believe that I, that-" And her husband, interrupting her: "You don't even have to say it. I'll believe."

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	2. History

Memento Mori

Rated M

Featuring evil!book!Snape and Emmeline Vance

Summary: Emmeline Vance is dead. She'd like to tell you how that came to pass.

A Note on the Timeline: I'm using the timeline enforced on the Harry Potter Lexicon, so the summer between fifth and sixth years would have been in 1996 , and Emmeline Vance, being 35 years of age, would have been born in 1961 , not 1971, which would make her 35 in 2006. This comes up during the course of this chapter, and I don't want anyone to think that I can't add. Or subtract. Just for the record, though, long division is beyond me.

Disclaimer: Yeah, not even British. So, seriously? Not even going to bother pretending I can stake a claim to the books.

Plea: Please, someone, beta my last three chapters! I need a beta! You can email me or AIM me, see my profile for further info, or volunteer through a review. Which reminds me, please review. Flames, constructive criticism, nitpicks, arguments, unwarranted praise, I'll take whatever I can get.

One more thing: Everyone, everyone, watch Casablanca. It's the greatest movie ever, it really is. Also, read the Tale of Genji, for it, too, rocks.

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Chapter Two: History

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Before I go on, I would like to take a moment to tell about my family. Do you mind? No, of course you don't.

The only relatives I have ever known are my parents. My father was French, the son of first-generation immigrants, a muggle, and a mechanic. My mother was Japanese, the first and only member of her family to come to this country, a witch, and the Chief Secretary of the Department of International Magical Cooperation, which she told me meant she was in charge of the rest of the secretaries. Not glamorous, I know, but it seemed to pay well. I wouldn't find out until much later that there was no such thing as the "Chief Secretary of, etc."

My father. My father's father and his wife, before I forget, let me tell you that story.

My grandfather was from Bordeaux. His name was Dominique Alain Luc Viens. When he was nineteen he married his sweetheart, who has seventeen. Her name was Marie Lacroix Viens. That was in eighteen ninety-eight. In nineteen-oh-four, they had a son. They named him Peirre Alain Viens. In nineteen eighteen, they moved to England, for reasons I have never been able to discern.

The great flu of that year came to England as well. My grandmother Marie was pregnant with her second son, my father. The flu claimed the life of their first son, but left my grandfather and his pregnant wife physically unscathed. Their son was born early in nineteen nineteen, a healthy boy of an astounding 12.6 pounds. My father was a large man. I inherited his height.

When they arrived in England, my granparents had their last names altered by the immigration officials, from Viens to Vance. When my father was born, his dead brother's name was altered from Peirre Alain to Peter Alan, and given to the healthy new baby.

In nineteen twenty-two, my grandparents hired a nanny to help care for their robust young boy, another French immigrant named, by British immigration officials, no doubt, Eloise Carter, though what her proper name was I never knew. She and my grandfather fell, shall we say, rather passionately in love. My grandmother did not approve.

Fortunately, for everyone involved I suppose, she wasn't around to dissaprove for very long. She took ill and died in nineteen twenty-six, after spending almost three years in and out of hospitals. Did Eloise have a hand in my grandmother's demise? Most likely, but the topic was not a popular one with my father. I suspect he knew more than he let on.

My grandfather married Miss Eloise in nineteen twenty-seven, and they took my father and moved from their small costal town (which, apparently, no longer exists), and moved to London.

This proved to be an unwise move. There was not much in the way of employment for a rural fisherman in the middle of that metropolis, and Eloise refused to take time away from Peter and work. They sunk deep into poverty. My grandfather looked for answers in the bottom of bottles. Drink made him both irritable and depressed, and under its influence he often looked for added comfort in the arms of prostitutes. His wife- always a volatile woman- murdered him in a fit of rage. She used a frying pan, of all things. It was cast iron, and my father kept it. He used it to make the best toast I have ever had. No one could make toast as well as my father. Muggle or not, there was some magic in him.

Eloise's last lucid act of life was to mince her husband's body with a meat cleaver, have my father scrub down the flat, and throw what was left of my grandfather into the Themes.

My father could have run from her then. It was nineteen thirty-four, he was fifteen years old, and he had been helping one of his father's few friends in a garage for six years. He was a fairly skilled mechanic, and he could have abandoned Eloise. He could have taken care of himself.

He didn't.

This is where my father's story begins. He left the school he had been attending, and took a full time job at the garage. Eloise had sunk into a deep depression, from which she was never to arise. Most of the time she was catatonic, and my father could not care for her himself, so he had committed at a private hospital. With the majority of his salary, he paid one-third of the rent on a flat built for one, which he shared with two other men, their wives, and the eldest's three young children. With what was left, he paid for Eloise's care. Food was provided by the two wives, both of whom worked for what should have been hat pin money- what would have been hat pin money, in a fair world.

On the weekends, my father made brunch for his housemates and- after eating- spent the afternoon with Eloise who, from what I could gather from the brief times my father spoke of these visits, railed against him, his mother and his father, when she was not utterly insensible of the world around her. I asked him, once, why he put with the woman who had killed his father, and his answer was this: his father had loved her, when he was in his right mind, and she loved him, when she was in hers. He owed it, he said, to the memory of their love.

It was my father who turned me into a hopeless romantic. I can't hate him for it.

I've tried.

Eloise passed away on September 7th, 1940. It was the first mass air raid on London. My father joined the army immediately.

That he survived the war was miraculous to me. He never spoke of it, but I knew- knew- that his story about an accident at his garage was a lie. I always knew that he got his limp in the trenches.

After the war, my father moved back to London, and found as many of his old housemates as he could. The wives and children- Mattie, Jeanine, and Mattie's boys, Ben, Jack, and Winston- had survived. His old boss, a one Alton Smith, had also survived, being too old to enlist when the war began. My father and Alton took Jeanine's two oldest boys into their employ and set about rebuilding the old business. Winston was never to be of any use, for he was severely autistic. It was his good fortune that his mother was both loving and patient, and (ironically) poor. She could not afford to send him to a private hospital, and refused to use any of the less than reputable options available to someone in her socio-economic class.

Things must have gone swimmingly for them, for my family never wanted for anything, and inherited quite a bit from my father, by middle-class standards.

I never inquired much about this period of my father's life, and he was never one to offer much information spontaneously, but from his rare anecdotes, I have pieced together this portrait of his life between the end of the war and his marriage to my mother:

Alfred, Jeanine, Mattie, the children and my father all moved into a flat together- again, a flat smaller than was truly comfortable- for economic reasons. Mattie and my father did not fall in love, exactly, but my father did woo her, for a time. I suppose he felt responsible for her, the widow of one of his good friends. Mattie, however, could never get over the death of her husband, and on January 7th, 1946, she committed suicide. She turned on the gas and went sleep. She never woke up.

Neither did Winston. Perhaps Mattie did not know that he was home, perhaps she didn't care, but the young boy succumbed to the gas along with Mattie.

Jeanine found them. Mattie, on her own bed, and Winston, curled up under Jeanine's.

Jeanine called the police, turned off the gas, opened the windows, waited (thank God) for the gas to clear, retrieved Alton's pistol from the bread cupboard, and shot herself through the left temple. She had been taught to write with her right hand by the nuns at her primary school so many years before, but she had been born left-handed. It was an evil she never could conquer, and the nuns had always hated her for it.

By the time Jeanine's other boys returned home, the police had already cleared away the bodies.

The boys did not remain in London long. Three months after the death of their mother, they moved to Liverpool to live with their last living relative- an Aunt Mae.

My father and Alton continued to run their business as best they could, but Alton's health was failing and soon my father was on his own. My father had always been a lucky man and his luck did not abandon him- he managed to acquire, by the grace of providence, a small and wealthy clientele. Mostly, he catered to gentlemen of good standing with too much free time and a penchant for then classic cars- now they would be called "antique".

My mother fled Japan after the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She told me that she came by boat, but I know better. She apparated all the way to England, right into the Office of the Minister of Magic, the longest recorded single distance apparated by a witch in all of magical history. That little feat secured her life-long employ, but I will discuss that further at some other time.

My mother, soon after arriving in London, found herself put up in a way that she felt would keep her under the wizarding radar. She took a small flat, and acquired a muggle car. The car and my mother did not get along. One day in 1946, it broke down a mere half-block from my father's garage. My father fixed my mother's car free of charge, and asked her to make sure to return. My mother's car broke down four times over the next three months, each time near my father's shop. They were married two years after they met, on July eighth, 1948.

My parents, between them, instilled in me a deep and abiding belief in fate. I never for one moment thought that anything happened by mere accident. Part of me, though, always expected the end result of all things to be romantic.

I had fancied that part of my long dead.

Severus Snape, it turned out, knew me better than I knew myself.

He had watched me for months- maybe years- I supposed. He had timed his arrival perfectly.

How he and his master learned of the work I had recently begun, I do not truly wish to know. Dulmbledore has promised me that it would remain secret, and I myself took precautions even the Unspeakables would be proud of- at least, I know of one who would have been. There are only three ways my project could have been revealed, and I do not truly wish to consider any of them at this moment.

Allow me to return to the arrival of Severus Snape.

He sat in the gray armchair, his head resting heavily in his hands, for five- perhaps ten- minutes before speaking.

In that time I closed and locked my apartment door, turned off the television, and sat on the couch, all in the jerky, stilted fashion of a cornered beast of prey.

When I sat, he looked up at me, brokenly, for a moment, and dropped his head again- miserable, exhausted and oddly alluring. I was either too tired to notice the mild glamour he had cast, or determined not to see it. In hindsight, it was fairly obvious.

Severus Snape was never meant to resemble Humphrey Bogart. Laugh, if you will. It's alright, really. The truly dead have a very hard time feeling insulted.

No, Sir Nick is not truly dead.

No, no ghosts are. They occupy the space between life and death.

Stop distracting me. I'm trying to tell you something.

Where was I?

Ah, the glamour. Yes. It worked rather well. I think he may also have been wearing have some cologne- not much, enough for someone sitting close to him to smell, but not enough to be consciously noticed. A subtle touch- Severus was never the type to underestimate the more basic senses.

I was utterly and completely lost- his little glamour, the small dash of cologne, my exhaustion- I began to weave for myself, somewhere in the back the of mind, a wonderful story. Something epic and tragic and devastatingly romantic filled with loss and love and sin and redemption and, I suppose, a happy ending.

I was always a- a- what's the word? What? Sucker. That's it. I was always a sucker for a happy ending.

Yes, I began to imagine Severus and myself as the protagonists in a epic romance- much like Rick and Elsa, or Genji and Murasaki. Only, in our movie, I wouldn't get on that plane. In our novel, I was sure, I would live until the last chapter.

I reached out and placed my hand on his forearm.

His reaction was so well thought-out, so well executed- Severus is like a dancer. Each and every one of his movements- how could I not have noticed it while I was alive?- is carefully choreographed to portray the image that he wants you to see, and nothing else.

He spasmed slightly, and jerked his head up. His eyes were narrowed just a bit, his lips jut barely parted. He paused for a moment, and relaxed his face, eyes widening to a normal size, lips lazily drifting together, before sliding his free hand over mine- both our pale, thin, long-fingered hands resting on his skinny forearm. His movements were subtle, precise- nearly balletic.

Severus claims to value intelligence above all else, but when he wants something from another person, he always appeals to their animal nature. He is a student of human behavior. When dealing with other people, he does not speak the language of tongues. His communications are comprised of movements- subtle cues that his listeners hardly know they are receiving.

The twitch was fear- not so much as to drive me off, but rather, just enough to make me pity him more. He had already sought me out, and displayed the great hallmark of vulnerability- exhaustion- in my home. I would not, unless he made a great show, ever think that he feared me. I had already, without knowing, been convinced that he trusted me implicitly. The twitch was meant to tell me that he had been hurt badly, so badly that even a kind gesture from a trustworthy person such as myself evoked an instinctive fear in him.

The narrowed eyes and parted lips were not terribly brilliant on their own, but paired- as a pair, they were brilliant. The suspicion of the narrowed eyes (a perfect complement to the fear of the preceding twitch) coupled with the apprehensive desire of the parted lips and the scent and the sly glamour, painted for me a perfectly appealing picture of a Byronic hero. Dichotomous, pained, brooding, dark, and- underneath the rough exterior, of course- gentle, courteous and romantic. A Mr. Rochester, or a Manfred.

Truly a masterful performance, he capped it with a gruff apology. And he started to speak. Without urging, without questioning, he told me what I allowed myself to think was everything. All of his complaints about the Order, about Dumbledore- all peppered with opinions that could have been mine.

Perhaps they were mine. Severus truly is one of the greatest Legillimenses of our time.

He spoke, and I listened. His voice was a wonderful tool- he did not so much play it like an instrument as he did conduct it like an orchestra. I cannot claim to remember all of what he said, but was transported by his voice. Enraptured, actually. Truly enraptured.

He stopped talking only to request tea, which he drank without complaint- amazing, I thought, most Pureblood British wizards would have taken offense at being served foreign tea, unsweetened, and without cream. Severus, however, asked if it was from Kyoto- the finest green tea, he used to say, came from Kyoto.

A masterful stroke. I had never in my life been so flattered.

He did not leave until eight in the morning.

He had, by virtue of a virtuoso performance, secured himself permanent welcome in my home- a thing he would very quickly make use of.

* * *

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